BAKUNIN’S TURTLEDOVES

I know I shouldn’t complain since, as far as things go, I am a privileged man, seventy-six years old, an iron constitution, a family with whom I share great affection, a generous income, a head that still works, and this poor Lázaro, who does so much to lighten the final stretch of my existence. But despite all this, Rosalía, I miss your thick silence in front of the hearth, our marriage of absences which we undertook with love and, like a standard, paraded around America. I know I’m being foolish, but I can’t help the memories constantly searching me out and rummaging through my insides. What can you say, my turtledove? Time does away with scruples and dignifies those early mornings when you raised your fearsome cries to make me jump out of bed and harness the oxen, since you hated it if you heard Xan de Castro or Paco Uzal’s carts anticipating the cock crow and broadcasting through the valley the harsh sound of their wheels, a piercing moan that emanated from the axles like the screams of a child.

You should see what has become of our little home. Branca, our daughter, who used to stay away from the village, has got it into her head to put everything back the way it was and bring out all the junk that was stored in the cellar: the chestnut bench, smoked stools, the trough where you used to chop the cabbage… and lots of other things that were thrown out in deference to modernity and have now returned to the kitchen with their aristocratic airs. They swept the hearth and hung old implements on the walls: the firedogs, tongs, bellows, trivets, spits… The only thing they removed was the cauldron that used to hang on the hook, since there was no way of getting rid of all that rusty blackness. Even those blue cups with their dainty patterns your parents gave us for our wedding are proudly displayed on the sideboard, alongside the ceramic from Sargadelos. Everything has acquired a brand-new sheen, the beds, iron headboards, wash-basins, the flaming glare of varnished wood, the polished stone of the entrance…

The well has water again, and the garden is full of tomatoes, carrots and lettuces, just as when the two of us were living here, in domestic bliss which was only ever broken when we argued over the position of the vegetable seeds…

We spend every summer here and lots of weekends, and may even leave Coruña for good and come and live here if Agustín manages to sort out the heating.

You don’t need to worry about me. I behave myself very well, better than with you… I don’t know… Branca certainly seems happy, I overheard her talking to her friends. I sit on the lavatory in order not to pee outside the bowl, I make my bed, offer to wash the dishes, even though there’s now a dishwasher, I polish everybody’s shoes at night, take care to fold my clothes, and look after young Lázaro as best I can. He’s not very hopeful about his operation in Barcelona. The chances of success are slim. When we come here, his mood changes. You have to bear in mind the noises of the city are a constant threat for someone like him.

Five years without you is a long time, Rosalía, five years spent dreaming of you every night, in the profane hope of seeing you again somewhere. I like to think there is something on the other side of death, not because of an egotistical wish to start another life, but so that I might be near you once more. There are nights, when the moon gets entangled in the branches of the Pardieiro fig tree, I am assailed by benevolent thoughts that almost lead me to pray, but in the end the tall walls of my conscience soon put a stop to this attempt at prayer and clothe me in the agnostic armour I am accustomed to wear. You know I don’t believe in priests – those creatures who never stop insisting that the whole of life is a sin – or in any other religion than the one that belongs to good people, but today is your anniversary and I don’t think I have any choice but to go to Mass. Our daughter would never forgive me if I didn’t.

I won’t say anything else for now, Rosalía, so receive a warm embrace from this old party-goer.

Camilo Sabio Doldán

Celas de Peiro, summer of the year 1992

Overcome by a bout of nostalgia that moistens his eyes, Camilo lets his cetacean corpulence fall back on the sofa and closes the folder where he keeps all the letters he’s written to his wife over the last few years, a correspondence he hides away as if it were the intimate diary of a teenager.

The cleanliness of morning sweeps down from Mount Xalo in waves of scaly, purifying light. In the garden, a magpie pecks at a pippin that’s fallen from the apple tree, while a goldfinch whistles from the midst of the Telva cherry trees.

Since Lázaro has yet to get up, Camilo decides to insist with his phone calls. He presses the numbers with bureaucratic automatism and is attended by a woman at the other end of the line whom he asks, in a voice dampened by nostalgia, whether they might happen to have the book. The woman, who is the librarian, confirms that the book does indeed appear in the Athenaeum’s catalogue, but several years earlier a certain A.D.B., a resident of Vilar Street in Santiago de Compostela, persuaded the director to accept thirty thousand pesetas in exchange for the only copy they had left.

Camilo writes down the full address and notices the tingle of disquiet running down his spine. He’s spent many years, forty perhaps, searching for this book, yearning after this printed treasure that had so much meaning in his life.

His enthusiasm transforms him into a little boy who has just been given a present for his birthday and, for a long while, he doesn’t stop shuffling dates until he finally postpones his trip to Santiago until the same week in which Lázaro is going to be operated in Barcelona.